


Learn to Fly

by SegaBarrett



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Extra Treat, Healing, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:43:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Tyler sees something in Bryce.
Relationships: Tyler Down/Bryce Walker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Learn to Fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mimm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mimm/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own 13 Reasons Why, and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: Title from the Foo Fighters song.

When Tyler unveils his photos at Monet’s, he doesn’t show his friends all of the pictures he took.

After all, there’s plenty of them that would be too hard to explain. He’s glad that he confided in Clay and Jess, but he’ll always remember who he told first, and how it was as if someone had lifted a rock off of him that had been crushing him.

Well, not just someone.

***

After the day in the yearbook room, Tyler suspects that Bryce is finding reasons to meet up with him.

He comes by Tyler’s house when his parents are away, for example. Tyler didn’t even think that Bryce knew where he lived, but apparently he does because he’s there, his hand dangling over Tyler’s doorknob like he owns the place.

(Knowing the Walkers, maybe he does.)

“Can I come in?” Bryce asks, and Tyler tells him that he can – or, well, he doesn’t quite say it because talking to Bryce is still tricky, like trying to step through glue. He just moves to the side and Bryce comes right on in.

***

“Bet you can’t get one of those 10,000 point ones,” Bryce dares, his fingers curved around the side of the skeeball. 

“Bet you can’t,” Tyler dares in response, worrying that the teasing will drop like lead. But Bryce chuckles and he rolls the ball and when it rolls into the outer rim, Tyler lets out a shaky laugh and then examines Bryce’s face for signs of it turning dark.

But it’s just a pouty disappointment crossing over his features, and he hands the next ball to Tyler and steps back.

***

Bryce and Tyler feed the ducks in the pond. When a goose gets in on the action and tries to snap up some pellets, they name him Ellsworth, just because it’s funny. 

They try to come up with names for all of them, then, but there’s just too many coming and going and what kind of name could be funnier than Ellsworth, anyway?

***  
When Tyler runs off the field at Homecoming, his hands streaked with blood (no, paint, he reminds himself, but somehow it’s always going to be blood) he hides behind the school.

When the game is over, he runs to the Hillcrest bus, only to catch it pulling away.

When he gets back home, he calls Bryce. And calls him. And calls him. 

He listens to the message Bryce left for him and decides that something must have gone horribly wrong when Bryce confronted Monty.

When he tracks Bryce’s phone and finds it to be sitting comfortably at the bottom of the river, he races to the pier, lifting Bryce up and lugging him in the direction of Bryce’s Range Rover. 

And all the fury seems to slip out of Bryce as he collapses into Tyler’s arms.

***

The first time Tyler sleeps with Bryce is the first time he sleeps with anyone. He’s over Bryce’s house, his new house apparently, and somewhere in the middle of watching _El Camino_ on a massive TV, Bryce starts kissing him. 

Tyler’s surprised at the playfulness of it all, the way that Bryce spins him and tackles him but is consistently gentle about it.

“Are you okay with this?” Bryce asks as he kisses down Tyler’s neck, nibbles at his shoulder. 

Tyler’s gone a bit pale and whispers, “It won’t be like… will it?”

Bryce’s fingers run through Tyler’s hair as he says, “It won’t. It might hurt a little bit at first but if it’s too bad, we’ll stop.” At Tyler’s skeptical glance, he continues, “I know that’s not what I’m known for, but…” He gestures to the bare cabinet. “No alcohol. Clear heads…”

“Full hearts, can’t lose?” Tyler offers, and Bryce laughs so hard that he snorts.

“I didn’t think you would know that show,” he says, and he rolls back in the bed and kicks up his legs. “And it’s up to you. I’m done with… all that stuff. I never should have done any of it in the first place.”

Tyler lays back, beside him, and asks, “Then why did you?” 

It’s a question he wishes he could ask Monty, but doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to, and it’s a long time before Bryce answers.

“Because I could.” There’s a little crack in his voice. “Nobody was going to stop me. When you can do anything…” He shifts and turns his head to Tyler, propping up his chin on his arm. “Tyler, you had a chance to blow us all away. And you didn’t. You’re good.”

Tyler shakes his head and says, “I think you are, too.”

“I’m working on that,” Bryce says, then pauses and says, “I mean, if you want, you could be the one on top.”

Tyler shakes his head.

“You’re the one who knows what he’s doing.”

“If this last year has proven anything, it’s that I don’t know what I’m doing about anything.”

“Maybe.”

Then it’s Tyler who strips off his shirt and pants, and under the lights in Bryce’s room that doesn’t seem to be filled with anything of Bryce’s at all, he lets Bryce examine him, running his fingers over every scratch and healed-over cut and bruise, left there by Monty and Taylor and Kenneth.

He shuts his eyes for a moment and then feels one of Bryce’s fingers, slicked up, requesting entry.

“Do it,” Tyler whispers, and he focuses on Bryce’s long, perfect pitcher’s finger curving inside him, and then on Bryce’s face as his eyebrows narrow as he tries to figure out his path. “Have you done this before?” Tyler asks, for something to ask.

Bryce chuckles and shakes his head. 

“Not like this,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate. He slides in another finger and Tyler’s nervous and twitchy but he’s not in any pain.

Bryce’s fingers stumble on something inside of him, something good.

When Bryce slides himself into Tyler, Tyler finds that he’s not thinking of Monty or blood or fear. He’s not even thinking about Bryce, not really.

He’s just watching his own fingers with every thrust, wrapped around the pillow and tapping it like he’s playing a piano.

But he doesn’t know what song.

***

Tyler stays at the hospital with Bryce while they wrap his ribs and put his arm and leg in a cast. He seems to be hopped up on pain medication and doesn’t say much.

“Who did this to you?” Tyler asks, though if they managed to do this to Bryce, then Tyler doesn’t know what he could hope to do about it.

“Not Monty,” Bryce tells him, “You’re going to be fine. I think he got the message.”

And then he slips back into sleep, with Tyler holding his hand.

***

Sometimes, Tyler wakes up from nightmares screaming and shaking. 

The days when Bryce is sleeping beside him, he’ll wake to one of his arms – muscular, immovable – over his stomach and the other around his chest, holding him tight.

“Hey,” Bryce will say. When they’re at Bryce’s house, he’ll brush off Tyler’s apologies with, “It’s okay. You didn’t wake anybody up.”

***

“What’re these?” Bryce asks, when a folder flops open full of pictures of Tyler’s bare chest, covered in bruises.

“Just something I was working on,” Tyler stammers. He reaches to close the folder but Bryce shakes his head.

“Tell me about it.”

“Just, you know. To chart how far I’ve come.”

“Let me take one?” Bryce asks. When Tyler reluctantly nods, Bryce scoops up one of the cameras and fiddles with the lens. 

“Shirt on or off?” Tyler inquires.

“Your choice.”

Tyler hesitates, then strips it off, and Bryce snaps away.

***

“We should go do something,” Bryce suggests, lazing on Tyler’s bed with his arms behind the pillow. “You like going to the arcade? We can go to the arcade. They’ve got pinball, too.”

Tyler hesitates. He hasn’t gone anywhere with Bryce in public, where people can see him, and he’s not sure what Alex or Cyrus (the people he’s most likely to see at an arcade) might say about it.

But he’s also tired of being afraid all the time about everything, and so he nods. 

“Sure, let’s go to the arcade.”

He pulls on his shirt, one of the ones that he’s swimming in, and turns his head to look at Bryce. 

“Isn’t there anyone you’d rather hang out with?” he asks.

Bryce snorts.

“No. Is there anyone you’d rather hang out with?” he echoes. “What about Alex or Clay? Or that kid Cyrus, with the hair?”

Tyler rubs at the side of his nose and blinks the tears out of his eyes. It had taken everything to tell Bryce (and even then he hadn’t told him, not exactly) and he can’t imagine trying to pretend to be normal for longer than he had to for his “chaperones”, even if they meant well.

“They don’t know,” Tyler says, “Only you do.” He pauses. “Arcade is good. But… no pinball. Or guns.”

“I think they have Mario Kart?” Bryce offers.

“That’s perfect.”

***

Tyler is probably the worst person to have picked Bryce up at the pier, he muses, because he can’t drive.

“My car’s right there,” Bryce mumbles out, “Keys are in my pocket.” He reaches in and hands Tyler his keys, and when he does an audiotape falls from his pocket. Bryce tries to stoop to get it, letting out a grunt of pain and nearly taking Tyler down along with him.

“Leave it,” Tyler tells him.

“I need it,” Bryce argues.

“You need a hospital,” Tyler counters. “I’ll get it once you’re in the car.”

Groaning, he carries Bryce to the back of the Range Rover and places him in the back. Then he reaches down and picks up the tape – covered in blood – and places it in the glove compartment after he climbs into the driver’s seat.

He’s watched Tony drive, and he’s watched Clay drive, and even watched Bryce drive – though Bryce rarely looks at the road and seems to avoid accidents by mere untouchability – but trying to do it himself is something completely different.

He turns the key in the ignition, spins the wheel, and starts off. 

Bryce is no help because it seems, in the backseat, that Bryce has gone silent other than a low, sleepy hum.

***

One time, Tyler’s parents catch them, hear Bryce tumbling out of Tyler’s room with barely contained laughter as they kiss good night.

They don’t say a word to him but ask Tyler, later, if everything is okay and if anyone is being mean to him.

He wonders how they managed to somehow get it both so right and so wrong all at the same time.

***

“I hate Hillcrest. I think I should come back to Liberty,” Bryce tells him as he sprawls on his bed – still spare – and tosses a baseball and catches it and Tyler watches.

“But how would that go over, though?” 

“I mean, at least then it’d be easier for me to look out for you. Monty looks at you wrong and, bam!” Bryce mimes a punch but stops when Tyler flinches. “Sorry.”

Tyler settles in again and takes one of Bryce’s hands in his, trailing the pads of his fingers over the length of Bryce’s. 

“I kind of like having you all to myself,” Tyler finally admits. “I’d have to share you.”

“With who?” Bryce asks, but Tyler doesn’t reply.

***

Tyler used to see red behind his eyes and on his hands every time his hand brushed against his ass, or his thigh, or his chest.

He’s not sure exactly how Bryce stopped that, but he did, and now it’s a surprising feeling when his fingers linger, as his mind allows him to replace the film on loop of Monty with the way that Bryce slides his fingers inside, and then lifts his hips, and the way his breath always feels on Tyler’s neck.

Most of the time, anyway.

But he still shivers when he sees Monty in the halls, eyes crawling over him. And he still won’t set foot in the Liberty boys’ bathroom.

***

“How do you feel?”

Tyler runs his fingers in feather-gentle swipes over Bryce’s bare chest – well, bare except for the bandages around his rips.

“It hurts to breathe,” Bryce admits, his eyes following Tyler’s fingers. 

“You’re still not going to tell me who did this?” Tyler asks, and his palm moves to Bryce’s chin, cradling it. Bryce shakes his head for half a second and seems to regret it.

“Me. It was my old shit coming back again,” he says. “It’s not worth talking about.”

Tyler slowly pulls a leg over Bryce’s, careful but daring as he straddles him. 

“Is it something you think might happen again?” he presses.

“Nah,” Bryce replies, “I think they made their point, and I made mine. But I don’t think I’ll be going back to Liberty after all.”

“I could transfer to Hillcrest.” Tyler fiddles with Bryce’s zipper.

“Nah,” Bryce says, “Don’t do that to yourself. Hillcrest sucks.”

***

“If you could do anything, be anything, what would you do?” Bryce asks, putting one foot on the swing in front of him and then lurching forward, letting his other foot swing in the air. 

“A photographer. I’d just travel the world, go everywhere, and take pictures of everybody,” Tyler replies, “You know, like places people aren’t usually allowed to go. But my pictures would be so good that they’d let me in with like, special permission or something. But I’d be safe, I guess. I hope.”

“You know, I read somewhere this quote that said ‘When I was in school, they said write down what I wanted to be, and I wrote down ‘happy’ and my teacher said I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told her she didn’t understand life.’ John Lennon said that.”

Tyler bursts out laughing.

“John Lennon did not say that. That’s one of those quotes they plaster everyone’s name next to, like ‘you laugh because I’m different, I laugh because you’re all the same’.” Tyler grins. “Abraham Lincoln said that.”

Bryce chuckles and swings forward, a hand extending to touch Tyler’s hair. 

“But you want to be happy, though?” Tyler asks, “That’s what you want to be?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe.”

***

“Come onnnn, Ty-ler! You’re taking ages. Are you having some kind of a medical issue in there or what? It’s been like ten minutes.”

“Give me a moment,” Tyler calls over the top of the stall, and when he catches his breath and slips out and washes his hands.

It’s then that the announcement comes over the loudspeaker: “Initiate lockdown.”

“What the fuck?” Bryce grumbles, and Tyler goes pale white.

“Shelter in place,” the announcement continues, and Tyler looks at Bryce.

“All right, I guess we’re sheltering in here,” Bryce announces. “Get cozy. Stupid drill.”

“You’re sure it’s a drill?”

“It has to be, right?” Bryce leans back against the sink carelessly, yawning for effect. “They’ll have us out in shorter than you were taking in there. Were you contemplating life or did you just not want to go back to math or what?”

“A little bit of both,” Tyler replies, and when there’s the sound of someone stomping on the ground he jumps so high that he thinks he’ll end up sitting on the sink. He wants to cry, and even Bryce looks a little worried, but not so worried that he doesn’t swagger over to the trashcan before he pushes it in front of the door.

“We’re fine in here, Tyler,” Bryce promises. “Nothing is going to happen to us.”

He wraps his arm around Tyler and Tyler clings to him and doesn’t want to let go. He starts to cry and doesn’t even try to stop it.

When the drill is over, Principal Nolan declares, “And Mr. Walker, I don’t believe you attend this school any longer. Does Hillcrest know where you are?”

And Tyler can’t help but smirk too when Bryce fires back, “Nope.”

***

Tyler Down sits in the sandbox, a bucket in his hand as he awkwardly attempts to scoop but ends up with most of it on his head. He’s small for his age – six – and, not for the first nor the last time, alone.

“Hey,” calls a voice, and he peeks up, seeing the pair of feet crash into the sand first.

“Hey?” Tyler questions, looking back at the clumpy sand pile with some annoyance.

“You wanna play?” the boy inquires. He’s dressed in a tiny little perfect outfit that’s painstakingly clean, and Tyler looks at him and shrugs.

“Nah,” he says, “I was playing by myself already.”

The boy takes a step forward and sits beside Tyler, reaching out and taking Tyler’s shovel from his hand.

“I’m Bryce Walker,” he says, beaming with pride. “Let me help."


End file.
